The contents of the following pages are the result of researches of several years, through files of old newspapers and hundreds of volumes of scarce works on India. Some of the authorities we have acknowledged in the progress of the work, others, to which we have been indebted for information, we shall here enumerate; apologizing to such as we may have unintentionally omitted: - Selections from the Calcutta Gazettes; Calcutta Review; Orlich’s, Jacquemont’s, Macintosh’s Travels; Long’s Selections; Calcutta Gazettes and other Calcutta papers; Kaye’s Civil Administration; Wheler’s Early Records; Malleson’s Recreations; East India United Service Journal; Asiatic Researches and Asiatic Journal; Knight’s Calcutta; Lewis’ Memoirs of Thomas; Orme’s History of India. For these we have taken paragraphs, which by the aid of paste and scissors we have thrown into something like narrative form the most prominent events during the rule of the Honorable East India Company in India. We do not aspire to be historians, we simply profess to lay before our readers some curious reminiscences illustrating the manners and customs of the people of Calcutta during the rule of the East India Company.

Our scenes are laid principally in Calcutta, but we have occasionally travelled up-country that we might exhibit life in the mofussil, and insome few instances we have given notices of occurrences in other presidencies.

Our residence during the time that we have been employed in this compilation, having been far removed from the Metropolis, and our access to newspapers and publications in consequence limited, we have been able to note only a few of the events of the times alluded to. But these notes will afford both amusement and instruction, showing as they do how rapidly improvement and progress have been going on, both in the condition and lives of the English in India, and we may add especially of the natives also, during the Government of the East India Company between the years 1600 and 1858.

The work was first taken up as an amusement during the leisure hour, but in the course of our reading, so many interesting records came under notice that it occurred to us, that the present generation might take an equal interest with

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